Maybe a few of you guys will remember me from my thread "Home-built bumper grille ducts". With the completion of this part:



. . brings the next phase of my project: painting the car. I decided to do a new thread to document the process necessary for painting your own car in a dirty garage with a gravel / dirt floor. Dust control is a challenge in this situation, making a plastic lined spray area necessary. Of course, the car needs to be sufficiently prepped with the necessary bodywork and sanding:



I got a huge piece of plastic for free at work (it was covering a truckload of wood and they were just going to throw it out) and decided to use it for the task of making my spray booth. I nailed it to the rafters and stapled its seams together:



Ventilation is an important item to pay attention to when spraying potentially hazardous chemicals in a closed environment, so I made a cutout in the "tent" for a box fan with a sheet to filter the incoming air:



I will be using a respirator designed for airborne chemical filtration BTW. I will update this thread with more pictures as I go along with the process. I am using the Napa Crossfire enamel topcoat system with a urethane sealer and etching primer. Total cost of the paint so far was a hair over $200 for a quart of primer, sealer, and two quarts of color topcoat with all the necessary reducers and hardeners. The color will be Ford Zinc Yellow, code B7 (late model Mustang yellow, he he).

 

That bumper looks amazing, cant wait to see what it looks like painted and on the car...

 

Wanna do mine lol

 

Did you just sand the body to get it down to just metal or did you use a chemical stripper?

Your booth looks good. Because of the necessary dent repair and limited resources I think I will leave it to a professional to paint my daily driver and let the local technical school practice on my race car. (Both cars have very bad hail damage as 2 weeks ago!)

 

Yo,


You and Dana are having a contest for best homemade paint booth! Heh.

Good luck and keep us posted!

Kevin
1989 GTUs "Yellow FC's are schweet!"

 

I cant believe you took it down to bare metal, you know
you don't have to. fresh paint will stick in some cases
better to the factory paint than to new primer on bare
metal.
also if you do take a body down to bare metal you have
to metal prep with a acid wipe then a " quick wipe".
even when you use a etching primer.
surface rust starts in seconds on bare metal and if not
treated right will cause all kinds of grief.
I hope you are removing the moldings, going through
all the effort and not removing them wouldn't make sense..
One good tip to keep dust out of your work as you paint
soak the ground down good with water,,, even the floor
of your booth watered down will help reduce dust.

matt

 

Hey now, where abouts are you located? as for the paint job the booth looks pretty stylin i must say , Im gonna agree with rarest and suggest a nice yellow

 

I am just south of edmonton.

matt

 

anyone have a pic of a yellow 7 2nd gen.?

oh BTW the front nose looks good, but whats the Weight on it?

 

Heres 2

Hit the photos tab on this one:

http://www.teamfc3s.org/forum/member...view&car_id=40

Here is another:

http://pub52.ezboard.com/fslcrotaryf...opicID=5.topic

 

nice thanx , even painted the molding!! the 7 look good in yellow. Im due fer a new paint job still have original paint on mine(alittle faded) but no body rust or damage!! i think im going yellow, sweeeeeeeeeeeeet!!thanx again

 

The bumper is a few pounds heavier than stock due to the fiberglass build-up. My strategy for laying down the etching primer is to sand the metal with 320 grit immediately (as in two minutes or less) before spraying, and then wiping with rubbing alcahol to remove the dust. I used Aircraft Remover to take the paint off for weight reduction purposes. I have heard about the trick of using water on the plastic to catch dust particles but thanks anyways for sharing it.

I spent this afternoon masking the trim and hatch / door openings as well as brake lines, wiring harnesses, etc. Masking is tedious!

 

My brother and I took a car down to bare metal and painted it. Never again. It rusted right through the paint. What a mess. Definately take every precaution you can to make sure your car doesn't end up the same way.

 

did you use primer after you had it down to bare metal?

 

I would like to thank the two forum members who warned me about painting over bare metal. I have done some more paint research, asked a guy at a bodyshop and searched datasheets and I now know that I need an acid-wash primer and a acid wipe before laying down the primer, just like the first guy said.

Had I known the trouble I was getting myself into by stripping off all the paint, I would not have done it!

Thanks guys, you saved me a big mistake. I don't want any corrosion under my paint job!!!!!!!

 

Here is what the bare metal looks like after an acid wipe treatment:





After the vinyl wash primer (etching primer for bare metal):




After being sprayed with Urethane primer / surfacer:




This is the kind of mess you will have if you choose to paint your car, too:



Maybe I will have some yellow on this thing in a day or two.

 

i love you man, you are doing a great job at what your doing, and your getting great results for your efforts.

Daniel

 

Wow- thanks so much for going into this much detail- I hear someone shouting ARCHIVE!!! ( ;

 

cool deal...nice to see peoples projects getting done. i hope to finish my project soon also. just slapped on my tokico 5 ways and eibachs. now on to the dvd player hahaha

Fred

 

88IntegraLS,

It’s nice to see other people who are not afraid to tackle there own paint job!! Looks like you are going a good job. What paint are you going to go with, IE a one stage, two stage base coat clear coat, what brand paint Dupont, House of Kolor, etc.? How many hours are you going to spend color sanding to get that perfect paint shine ? I want details

 

Hey, I thought I would mention that sometimes those paint fumes are highly flammable.. and the electric motor from the fan can ignite the fumes.

 

DONT USE RUBBING ALCOHOL!!!!! It has a LARGE consentration of WATER!! I've used rubbing alcohol instead of prepsolve before with rust happening in a matter of seconds.. YES seconds! (it was a oil pan sanded to bare metal) Only alcohole that should be used is 100% stuff (pharmisudical sp?) standard stuff from store is like only 50% alcohol and 50% water. Use prepsolvent made for painting. Good luck and mucho props for all the hard labor and work.

~Mike.............

 

No Pain no gain!



Sometimes you just gotta roll the dice and hope for a 7!


Robert

 

Yeah he is right use something like M.E.K. on the bare mettal before you shoot on the primer. But once the primer is on and you need something to clean the surface after you have sanded rubbing alcahol or Isopropic alcohol is fine but nothing stronger or it will take off the primer . But yeah watter and bare metal do not get along.

 

Thanks, guys. The paint is Napa Cross/Fire acrylic enamel, three part (color, reducer, catalyst) and was about $100 for all three parts and two quarts of the color. The Urethane primer is Napa Martin-Senour Tec Base surfacer / sealer, which is also a three part paint. It was about $70 for a quart with necessary reducer / cat. The etching primer is Napa / Martin-Senour Vinyl Wash etching primer. It is a two part (not catalyst) and about $65. I used Martin-Senour Iron Etch steel cleaner for the metal etch / acid wipe treatment, $15. I didn't use any rubbing alcahol on the bare metal after etching it.

I plan on spraying the color as wet as I can w/o runs and after it has cured for a couple weeks, getting some Macguires three step finish conditioner (cleaner, polish, wax). If the paint does not gloss out as good as I want at that point, I will get some rubbing compound and make it shine. This won't be a show car but I want the paint to be durable. That is why I dropped $240 on all the primers, reducers, catalysts and paint so far. My goal is to match the quality of the OEM enamel for shine and durability, but with yellow instead of red.